The book is a first attempt to analyze the complex problems of Romanian etymology in English. Romanian is a Romance language, but it also inherits an old Pre-Romance layer represented by both Indo-European and Pre-Indo-European elements like Greek or Albanian. The books is divided into three parts: 1. An ample introduction which resumes the archaeological, historical, and linguistic problems of southeast Europe, with focus on Romanian and its neighboring languages (Slavic languages and Hungarian). It reviews various hypotheses regarding the prehistoric cultures and how they developed across millennia; it continues with the Thracian cultural groups which represent the substratum of Romanian, and how these groups underwent a long and complex process of Romanization; the period of migrations is also analyzed, finally the new cultural groups which consolidated during this long period (approx. 6 centuries). 2. The Dictionary proper includes over 5,000 entries representing the representative vocabulary, but also rare and dialectal words, words referring to flora and fauna (very important in an etymological analysis). It covers the old Latin heritage, the substratum heritage, the Slavic, Hungarian and Ottoman influences as well as some relevant neo-Romance elements (the New Romanization of Romanian, mainly in the 19th c.). 3. The third part includes a glossary of specific terms used in this book as well as lists of the relevant prehistoric roots quoted in the dictionary.
